I'm sitting at home in my PJs at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, crawling out of my skin, because 4-6 inches of snow is dumping on Northern Virginia today. I made it to the barn, but turned right back around, choosing instead to be stuck at home with office work.

Unpleasant precipitation aside, winter storms are a real threat to horses and horse businesses, and we take them very seriously. Here are some of the things we do at Sprieser Sporthorse to prepare, and weather, the weather.

I'm a big believer in down time for the horses. Whenever I can, usually once mid-summer and once late fall, I like to give my personal FEI (or nearly-FEI) horses six weeks of "fluffing," as I call it, where we spend a lot of time in the snaffle walking and trotting and cantering around on circles, punctuated by days of just hacking around. It's good for their minds as well as their bodies, and I'm always so impressed by how great they feel when I pick them back up and put them back to work on Week 7.

A few days into the show I observed to someone that it didn't feel like a championship. Other than the big fancy indoor ring decorations, and the super-snazzy high-tech judges' booths, this could have been any other big-deal horse show.

I joked that it was because, unlike other national and international championships I've attended, this is not a show filled with people who hate each other. (And I think that's really not actually a joke.)

There are many good qualities required to be declared a "good rider." A solid seat, quiet hands, lots of know-how and experience. But to be a good show rider, you need one other thing—the ability to roll with the punches. Because if you can't, not only will you not win much, but you'll also stroke out. Showing horses is barely-organized chaos under the best of times.

And sometimes, it's not the best of times.

I have quoted this clever one-liner I read somewhere about horse showing before, and I'll use it again: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.

While it was a gorgeous, sunny day in Lexington, Ky., today, for Fender and I, it rained.

After our Regional Finals performances—where Fender was World Champion of the World in our warm-up class and then super-exhausted for his Finals—I was determined to not spend my best horse in the locker room, to come into the National Finals Championship class with lots of energy.